Political Quotes

“I am pleased to introduce the Progressive Consumption Tax Act of 2014. We need a tax code that is fair for American employers and fair for American families. We need a tax code that makes our U.S.-based businesses more competitive. Finally, we need a tax code that allows us to responsibly and reliably collect reasonable revenues. I applaud the contributions of my colleagues in both the Senate and the House for their efforts in also trying to achieve these goals in tax reform. However, I am adding this bill to the tax reform debate, because I think we need to seriously reconsider the framework for that debate. Today, we seem to be stuck on 1986-style tax reform--lower the income tax rate, and broaden the base by eliminating tax preferences. The 1986 reform was a tremendous effort. But, I would argue that that reform lasted less than one year before Congress began tinkering with our income taxes once again. Since then, innumerable changes have made our tax code more and more complicated and, for many taxpayers, less and less fair. Another issue with reform efforts focusing on our current tax system is this--the extent to which we rely on income taxes is very out of step with the rest of the world. Compared to other countries that are in the OECD--developed countries with advanced economies, countries that we want to be competitive with--all taxes as a percentage of GDP in the United States are low. But, the U.S. is not a low income tax country.…”